The Anatomy of Calm
by GC Rust
Summary: Sometimes even when the world is blowing up around you, the best course of action is to take things slow and easy.


The world exploded around him, and still he continued to whistle a nameless tune.

Fighters screamed from the heavens and dropped explosive payloads on the ground above, turning the surface temperature into a rolling furnace, and still he continued to whistle.

Nosecone had turned off his communicator awhile ago. The screams of the wounded and the harassed orders from superiors had really started to get old, especially when Afterburner (predictably) joined in to question the orders of said superiors.

The Autobots were fighting a losing battle here, over a relatively unimportant backwater that was the Helix district. Nosecone didn't understand the reasoning behind the attack, nor did he understand why there were so many Decepticons guarding such a unimportant facility. Didn't matter much, either way. The others were getting chewed to pieces by the fortified defenses, which made it Nosecone's job to save everyone's tailpipe.

Just a typical day.

Nosecone continued his merry whistling as he activated his vehicle mode's giant durabyllium-steel drill as he approached the first of half a dozen large Plasma Cannon installations. He did pause a beat as the drill began grinding into the high grade military alloy that comprised the installation, but once he was certain the drill was making progress he began whistling again.

He wondered what was the bigger surprise to the Decepticon weapons crew inside - discovering an Autobot had actually tolerated the pounding they'd been dishing out, or the fact one was blatantly trying to rip apart their pretty installation.

Unfortunately for them, Nosecone wasn't exactly in the mood for conversation. Nor did he just bore a hole straight through. Instead, he began slightly altering his path in a way that allowed him to take out three of the four major support beams. The Decepticons inside, gearing for a fight when the Autobot would breech the wall, were instead greeted by the giant plasma cannon they were charged with crashing down on top of them.

Nosecone continued to whistle as he proceeded to do the same to two more installations. As he approached the fourth, however, it was clear the Decepticons had wised up.

The Energon charge was small, probably fashioned from the emergency power stores to the gun mount, but it was enough to send Nosecone end over end and give him some pretty interesting scars running down his underbelly and flanks. Treads spinning uselessly in the air, Nosecone transformed to Robot Mode and stood up, dusting himself off as best he could while checking his superstructure for any major damage.

The energy bolt caught him across the right shoulder, leaving a pretty deep gash. Nosecone grimaced, that smarted. Glancing at the installation, Nosecone found the culprit - a Decepticon warrior taking refuge on the ledge connecting the plasma cannon to the control installation. He was well fortified up there, protected by two slabs of armor.

Nosecone launched the two missiles that were connected to his back as he turned his attention fully back to the installation. Those two missiles were short ranged weapons - propelled by simple rockets, they were intended for short ranged anti-air defense and general ground artillery. But they were guided by two cameras tied directly into Nosecone's optical receptors. Even when the Decepticon pulled back into the recesses of the walkway to give himself maximum coverage by the two slabs of armor that comprised the installation and the gun mount, those missiles knew what their target was, and avoided the armored walls accordingly.

As the orange, yellow, and red fire bloom of detonating explosives illuminated him from above, Nosecone stood in front of the service hatch and contemplated the best course of action. Shrugging, he raised his left hand and banged on the hatch three times in slow, unhurried succession.

The hatch hissed open, the Decepticon inside blinked in obvious surprise.

"Well what do you know, that actually worked." Nosecone commented to himself as he raised his right hand and depressed the trigger on his X-ray laser pistol. The Decepticon staggered back, the smoking wound in his lower torso incapacitating him and forcing him into stasis lock but not actually killing him.

Nosecone stepped into the installation and took in the simple round design with the master control panel in the center of the room. Walking unhurriedly over to it, he spent a few minutes familiarizing himself with the controls then punched in a relatively simple command.

The cannon itself was preset to fire automatically every thirty astro-seconds. This left the actual mount crew free to fight off Autobots who broke through the cannon's line of fire, but it also meant no one was actually paying attention to cannon placement and firing commands. So perhaps it was forgivable that the fifth cannon in the defense perimeter never even registered the fact that it's consort suddenly whipped sideways and blew her away.

With half the plasma cannons offline or pointed in the wrong direction, it was simplicity itself for the Autobot attackers to reroute themselves through the open fire lane and swarm the base. Without the plasma cannons keeping the Autobots at bay, the base defenses were unable to hold out against them. And without the base to provide support, those Decepticons still holed up in their weapon mounts found themselves surrounded.

Three Megacycles later, the battle had been decided and the Autobots were victorious. It wasn't till a Megacycle later that a search and recovery party discovered Nosecone, dozing by the control panel of the Number Four Plasma Cannon.

"What took you so long?" Nosecone asked with a grin when he was awakened.


End file.
